The missing 3 months…

Back in April I promised some more details on my move and my new life. I am on the train commuting to work early in the morning and this means I finally have some time on my hands to write! so here’s an overview of what’s been going on since I properly moved to Spain.

House-move

I had a massive clear-out in London, selling and giving away as much as I could. I really tried to be “ruthless” and yet I have still ended up with 9 boxes to ship – so much stuff! I have now given up my mini-flat at my mum’s house in London and my grandmother has moved in, so no going back. Eek!!

Job

I got a job as a consultant project manager at an organization based in Alicante. Quite far from Valencia but it’s in Spain and that’s the main thing, right? I have worked in project management for years, and I have experience as both an independent contractor and a consultant via a consultancy firm, but in my last job I was in-house at the company so it’s quite an adjustment going back into a client environment. The fact that’s public sector, doing a type of project I have never worked on before, and dealing with different cultural norms in the workplace is also challenging, but I am navigating it. Once I settle in a bit more, I also plan to set-up a side-hustle so watch this space for that.

Work-life

I am now in a hybrid role between being home-based and spending time in the office. I had that kind of gig in my old job but working remotely was the norm as most of my colleagues were overseas. In my new job they aren’t really used to having remote team members and conducting day-to-day business without being face to face most of the time, so now I am expected to make the journey to Alicante once per week (minimum) and leaving home at 6:30am for the 3-hour journey in isn’t great – I am no not a morning person! Hopefully at some point there will be a level of trust in remote workers and more embracing of technology but for now I am stuck with frequent commuting – it’s not what I expected as I was hired to be off-site but hey-ho, I had to make the sacrifice to realise my dream of moving, and some things are worth it. The other 4 days per week I have been working from home, and recently I have decided to try out using a co-working space, so I don’t get totally isolated. I am also navigating self-employment since I am a consultant so there was a lot to do there to get up and running.

Seeing the Queen!

I travelled back to London for a few days at the end of May to be my mum’s “plus one” at the Queen’s Garden Party at Buckingham Palace – that was pretty cool and I got a couple of snaps of Her Maj and Prince William. It was shortly after the royal wedding so there was no sighting of Meghan Markle and Prince Harry (which is a shame because they’re the “cool ones”); I think they were on honeymoon.

Travel

I’ve just had my summer holidays. I spent 10 days in Panama in the middle of June which was quite an adventure (I will tell you more, but this post is quite long, so I will save it for another day), and for the weekend just gone I finally did something I have been intending to do for months and visited a couple of towns on the Costa Blanca (Javea and Denia).

So, lovely readers, that’s an update on what I have been doing and now I am ready to get this blog back up and running in real-time 😊 “Speak” to you soon!

Hi, I’m Henissi!

I’m a born and bred London girl but last year (2016) I decided that since I was still single and “untethered” by children or a mortgage at the ripe old age of 34 I might as well take the plunge and do something adventurous and interesting with my life. I studied Spanish in high school but then never used it. I would have loved to have taken a gap year after university and gone to travel South America or something like that, but I never did and I forgot most of my Spanish. So, my first thought upon asking myself “What’s something you always wanted t do but never did?” was – take a career-break to spend 3-6 months in Spain to “become fluent” in Spanish! But as I thought about things more I realised that I could actually just move to Spain… as in really move to Spain. So that’s what I decided to do.